Moving from planning to action: Exploring best practice policy in the finance of local bicycling and pedestrian improvements

Abstract

In the face of diminished federal and state transportation funding, cities continue to look for creative local funding mechanisms to pay for and implement their multi-modal goals. To understand the types of local funding being used, this study analyzes case study cities across the U.S. to identify best practices, documenting the most widely used methods of funding. We find that county sales tax measures are most common but that additional popular approaches are bond issues, general fund allocations, and transportation impact fees, especially for larger cities. More-so, all of the cities evaluated have both bicycle and pedestrian masterplans to guide infrastructure investments and most pursue more than one local funding source to fund projects. This provides important lessons to communities that desire to improve the local bicycle and pedestrian amenities − the best practice to move from policy to action.